


Cage Your Heart With Mine

by thilesluna



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drug Addiction, Drugs, Frottage, Hurt Sam Winchester, M/M, Rehab AU, Sam is pretty fucked up, Sam-Centric, Self-Destruction, Suicidal Thoughts, fucked up emotions, self-hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-07 23:43:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thilesluna/pseuds/thilesluna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Winchester is fucked up and in rehab for drug addiction following an arrest. </p><p>Warnings: there is talk of attempted suicide, drug abuse, emotional abuse, and a few canon-compliant deaths (John, Mary, Jess)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cage Your Heart With Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to my friend Rishem (I can't remember if she's on AO3 or not) for beta'ing.

Dean can’t pay for this. There’s no way Dean can pay for this, not on his salary, even if he did just get promoted to be one of the senior designers in Bobby’s firm. Sam wants to die. It might be easier, actually. There’s probably insurance on him. Maybe. Fuck, he has no idea because he’s been out of it so long. The nurse taking his blood pressure smiles at him and he does his level best to smile back even though his head is spinning and he thinks he might throw up.

The room is nice. Swanky, even. The kind of room you’d expect from a place like this. Everything’s white and clean and perfect and for whatever reason, it pisses Sam off. He wants to sweep everything off the counters, break all the jars, rip the doors from the cabinets—he wants to destroy everything else so it feels just like he does. He wants cotton balls and tongue depressors everywhere. He wants the nurse to call for help and the orderlies to come crashing in. He wants them to inject him—knock him out so he doesn’t have to feel again.

That’s what got him in this mess in the first place.

He doesn’t do any of that though. He sits on the crinkly paper, breathes in when the nurse says, let’s her check the stitches in his eyebrow and the cast on his arm. She tells him to keep everything clean unless he wants to smell like the walking dead and he nods dully. He clenches his good hand tight, lets his nails dig into his skin until he’s sure there will be marks—if he’s lucky, blood.

He’s seriously fucked up.

Sam doesn’t know how long he sits there but the room fades out eventually, just like everything else. He thinks he might be able to will himself out of this place if he thinks about it hard enough. He closes his eyes.

 

_“This is a bad idea, I think.”_

_“Well I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t fucking ask you to think then,” Ruby snarls._

_Sam’s head isn’t working right. He needs it but they don’t have money for it. He can’t think—_

_“Watch the street, Sam. For fuck’s sake,” Ruby says and he does. He wraps his arms around himself to stop his hands from shaking while she fiddles with the doorknob._

_“Do you even know what you’re doing?” he asks, not taking his eyes off the road._

_Ruby sighs angrily. “Do you want to fucking do this?”_

_“No,” he responds. He doesn’t want to do anything._

_“Can you hear me?”_

 

“Sam? Can you hear me?”

His eyes snap open and he jumps back from the hand reaching out to him. “What do you fucking want?” he growls.

The nurse studies him carefully, not reacting to his sudden change in mood. Dean says Sam’s unpredictable and it’s one of the reasons he’s here. This nurse must be a seasoned member of the admitting staff, he realizes. She doesn’t bat an eye.

“It’s time to go to your room. “

He slides off the paper. It rips.

“Great.”

\--

His room isn’t much. It’s white, like the exam room but at least it’s got a pretty big window. When they escort him in, the first thing he does is shuffle over to it and look out at the view. The hospital borders a state forest and he’s been placed in a room that faces it, which he appreciates. But the trees are dead, skeletons against the blue sky.

Sam closes the blinds.

They leave him with the bag Dean packed, or at least the things they didn’t confiscate before allowing it into the facility. Sam knows they went through his stuff but after about half an hour of staring at it, he carefully takes everything out of the duffle, just to categorize what he has left. His hands are clumsy when he pulls his clothes and toiletries from it. He drops his toothbrush and curses it and then himself. His hands are still shaking and he wonders if that will ever stop.

He makes both his hands into fists even though his broken wrist protests. Maybe if he can get it to hurt enough they’ll give him something for the pain.

They won’t.

He pulls the last bit from the bag—his favorite Stanford sweatshirt—and something falls out with it. Sam watches it flutter to the ground, landing face down on the floor. It’s a picture, he knows that much, but when he stoops to pick it up, he isn’t prepared for what he sees. His heart races and his breath catches in his chest. Panic attacks are a symptom of withdrawal—what a shame he has to have one the first day.

When the orderlies come crashing in, he’s on the ground, the picture crushed in his fist.

 

_“Sam, where have you been?”_

_He’s already tired of Dean asking him that. He’s tired of everything. “With Ruby.”_

_He knows Dean doesn’t like her because his brother is never subtle about anything like that. Even now, he can see Dean’s face closing off, his brow furrowing. “Sammy, what happened to your eye?”_

_His eye? He reaches up to touch and starts when the skin hurts to press. He shrugs. “Dunno.”_

_He wishes Dean would stop looking at him like he’s a monster._

 

Sam is stupid. So, so stupid. He hates that he’s here, that he did this to Dean and Bobby and—no…Dean and Bobby are the only ones. No one else in his life can even stand to look at him anymore. He’s so fucking fucked up.

They let him out of the infirmary a couple hours later, checking and rechecking his heart rate. He doesn’t register them moving him around, the orderlies physically lifting him onto the bed, the nurses touching his arms. The only thing he reacts to is them trying to take the picture from his hand. He snarls at them, wrenches it from their grasp and they leave it alone. Sam’s grateful.

When he gets back to his room, he finds another man waiting. Well, not so much waiting as lounging on the other bed, the one closest to the window. The man is smaller than Sam, much smaller, his feet barely making it to the end of the mattress. He’s laying with his arms folded behind his head and his eyes closed, toes moving to whatever song he’s humming. He hopes this guy isn’t crazy. Or at least, a manageable type of it.

He sits carefully on the other bed, back turned to his roommate but the springs are loud enough that the guy stirs and Sam hears the rustling of the sheets.

“So you’re the new roomie, I take it,” the guy says. Sam doesn’t say anything. He just shrugs. He hears the other bed squeak and then the shuffle of slippered feet on the tile floor. The guy moves to stand in front of him, his light brown hair falling into his face, and extends his hand. Sam stares at it. “I’m Gabriel.”

“Sam,” he says but his voice is rough and he realizes he hasn’t really said much the past few days. He takes the other man’s hand in his own—the one without the cast, even though he has to awkwardly reach to do it—and gives it a cursory shake, letting go quickly.

“Cool.” Gabriel studies him for a moment and Sam knows he’s taking in the track marks on his arms so he folds pulls them around himself. “I expected you earlier. I mean your stuff was here—“

Sam thinks about the photo in the pocket of his hospital issue pants. “I was in the infirmary.” He doesn’t elaborate and Gabriel doesn’t press. When he finally looks up, it’s to see the man smiling down at him. He’s got a nice face, it’s open and honest, something Sam hasn’t seen a lot of in the past few years. His eyes remind Sam of when he was younger and his dad would take them over to Bobby’s and the two men would talk over glasses of whiskey while he and Dean played with Bobby’s Rottweiler in the scrap yard. They’ve got an ineffable quality to them—something in the way they catch the light from the window. Sam’s never been good at sorting out his thoughts concerning things like this though so he looks away.

“First day’s the worst,” Gabriel says.

Sam hopes he’s right.

 

_Ruby is beautiful and Sam is drunk. He’s almost always drunk, if he’s being honest. It’s the only way to sleep without having nightmares._

_Ruby studies him carefully as he throws back another shot, watches him like she knows what he’s trying to do. “Sam, right?”_

_He looks up from his empty shot glass. “Yeah.”_

_“We used to live in the same apartment complex, I think,” she says._

_“Maybe.”_

_She isn’t deterred. “I met you at one of the mixers.”_

_He signals the bartender for another but the damn guy isn’t paying attention. “Sure.”_

_Ruby slides into the seat next to him, touches his arm. “Let me buy you a drink.”_

 

Gabriel was wrong. The second day was worse, and the third day, worse than the second. Sam finds himself sweating through each night, trying not to fall asleep, dreaming when he does. He hates the dreams more than anything. He needs something to make them stop. He’s sentenced to a 90-day stay in this place. He hates everyone here and he wants to go home but counting down the hours and days seems to make them go by slower.

He goes to group therapy where he doesn’t talk. He eats lunch in the cafeteria where he sits alone. He spends his free time in his room, silently watching out the window.

They won’t let Dean visit yet. He’s talked to him on the phone—well, Dean’s talked at him and he grunts acknowledgements through the line. He has to wait until four weeks before his brother can come in person.

He doesn’t know if he’ll last that long.

Two weeks in, his body fights him and he falls asleep listening to Gabriel’s quiet breaths next to him. He can see her face and she looks so fucking disappointed that it feels like he’s being gutted. She frowns and everything goes bright. Too bright and too hot and she’s engulfed in flames and she’s _screaming_. She won’t stop screaming and Sam can’t get to her because it’s so damn hot.

Someone grabs him, shakes his shoulder and he lashes out, catching them in the jaw with his fist. He wakes up sweating, his hands shaking, and his head spinning. Gabriel looks up at him from the floor where he’s holding his face. Sam leans over to the other side, reaching blindly for the trashcan he knows is between their beds and finds it just in time to throw up. He doesn’t hear Gabriel move, but there are hands on his back, rubbing gently and Sam thinks about how Dean used to do the same thing when he was sick as a kid.

It makes him feel worse.

He spends the next day in the infirmary where they give him an IV and fluids because he hasn’t been drinking enough and his body is trying to shut down.

Sam doesn’t go to group because he thinks he might accidentally tell them he wants it to.

 

_“Hey, kid.”_

_Sam is fourteen and his parents are dead. Dean is eighteen and technically an adult, but they’re living with Bobby until he graduates from high school. Sam knows Dean wants to get a job right away and skip college, but Bobby won’t let him. He looks up from his book. “Yeah?”_

_This guy is a senior, it’s the last day of school…Sam doesn’t want to get beat up today. But the guy doesn’t look like he wants to beat anyone up. He looks thoughtful. “You’re one of the Winchesters, right?”_

_“Yeah…”_

_The kid shuffles his feet a little bit. “I’m sorry about your parents,” he says and holds out a beer for Sam to take._

_He’s never had alcohol before, but he takes the can with a small smile and cracks it open. It tastes bitter on his tongue and he knows from the label it’s cheap and designed to get you drunk quick. He hopes it works. “Me too.”_

 

He has to talk to the head doctor, one on one, when he gets out of the med wing. He doesn’t want to but he thinks that maybe if he does everything he’s supposed to, it’ll be like prison and he can get out early.

The doctor is Castiel Novak, he’s quite famous in the field of addiction recovery and when Sam enters the room, he’s surprised at how young the guy looks. He’s in his late 30’s maybe, but he has this feeling of timelessness that Sam can’t really put his finger on.

When he speaks, his voice is gravely and intense. “Good afternoon, Sam.”

Sam sits awkwardly on the couch. “Hi.” At least it’s not one of those ones from TV shows and movies, the big leather lounge things.

Dr. Novak watches Sam long enough that he shifts uncomfortably and plays with the plaster of his cast. Sam expects the questions to come barreling at him, the accusations of how sick he is and what they have to do to get him better, but the doctor just sits there and waits.

“Doctor Novak?”

“Yes, Sam?”

“What—I mean, aren’t we supposed to talk?” he asks, eyes flickering to the notebook on the arm of the doctor’s chair.

Novak’s eyes narrow. “Do you want to talk?”

Sam shrugs. “I don’t know…I just thought—“

“Therapy doesn’t work if you don’t want to be here,” the doctor says suddenly. “I can’t help you if you’re not willing and I’m not going to try. I’m not going to trick you into talking about your parents or you family or your life using mind games or fancy psychoanalysis tactics because you’re too smart for that. You’d figure me out and resent me for even trying.” Novak picks up his notebook and throws it onto his desk. “You’re required to be here, yes, but in my experience forcing people to do things they don’t want to ends badly for everyone involved. We can talk if you want, but it doesn’t have to be about anything more important than the weather.”

Sam is quiet and Novak watches him with a calculating gaze. His hands are shaking again. “Have you ever read Good Omens?” he asks finally. Novak shakes his head.

“What’s it about?”

They pass the hour that way, discussing books and moving on to movies after a while. Sam isn’t the pop culture freak that Dean is, but he seems to know more than Novak.

It’s not until Sam’s back in his room that he realizes it’s the most he’s talked since the trial, even if he didn’t say anything of value.

 

_“I don’t know about this,” Sam says, watching Ruby fill a syringe with whatever it is they picked up earlier._

_“It’ll be fine, Sam,” she reassures him. “It’ll help you, I promise.”_

_Help him what, he’s not sure. He hopes it’ll help him forget._

 

Gabriel talks to him every day—though it’s more along the lines of Gabriel talking _at_ him because Sam never responds. It doesn’t seem to deter the other man however, and he keeps chattering away. Sam thinks it should be annoying, but for whatever reason, it isn’t.

He still goes to group and he still doesn’t speak often, except in Dr. Novak’s—Castiel’s, he insists on Sam calling him—presence. They get along strangely well, sharing a love of books. Sam borrows them sometimes from the doctor’s office and finds that he sleeps best on the days he has his late sessions.

Group is a different story. Gabriel is in his, which is nice because at least some of the babbling is familiar, but most of the time Sam’s there he has to tune out what everyone is saying. When he doesn’t, the words cut into him and sometimes they make him remember things he shouldn’t. Most of it is harmless—addictions stemming from stress or too much partying. A lot of the clients in the center are rich. Like insanely, stupidly, rich. Sam thinks he saw a celebrity from reality TV in the community room yesterday. But for every five rich clients, Castiel tells him there is one person who wouldn’t have been able to afford proper treatment on their own. It’s a deal he worked out with a bunch of the higher ups in the company and some of the area judicial officials that he gets to treat patients he wants, as long as he clears some rich people through too. Sam wants to ask if he’s one of the special cases, but he knows he is because he has less than $20 to his name and Dean can’t afford this on an engineer’s salary. Castiel won’t tell him though.

Group isn’t always bad, but sometimes one of the stories hits something stuck deep in Sam’s gut. One of the guys, Garth, he talks about when he was twelve and his father would take him into the field and have a bonfire and give him beers and they’d both drink until they couldn’t stand. They’d throw whatever they could find on the fire until one day, Garth reached for the can of lighter fluid by accident and it nearly killed his dad when it exploded.

Sam’s picturing the fire before he can stop himself and his hands are shaking. Group goes on and no one seems to notice and he tries so hard to rein it in, but he can feel the heat of it and he wants it to stop. Just make it stop.

He doesn’t realize he’s screaming for it to stop until he hears Gabriel’s voice in his ear telling him to breathe and telling him he’s safe, that he’s going to be fine.

He won’t be. He can’t.

 

_“You’re gonna be fine, Sam,” Dean laughs. “College is where you belong. I can tell.”_

_Sam groans as he lifts his duffle into the trunk of his car. “You’re only saying that because you want me out of the apartment.”  
Dean pretends to look affronted but it’s ruined by the curve of his smile. “Hey, at least now I don’t have to worry about putting a sock on the door.”_

_“Gross.”_

_“You love me, bitch.”_

_Sam grins and pulls Dean in for a hug. “Jerk.”_

 

It’s the fourth week and Dean’s allowed to come in and see him. Sam tells him not to, but he does anyway. Sam doesn’t like the way Dean’s staring at him but he doesn’t comment because at this point he’s pretty much only doing this for his brother anyway. He knows that he looks like shit, like he hasn’t been eating or sleeping. The truth is, he’s been doing both, but only enough to not pass out when he stands up.

“Heya, Sammy.”

Sam wishes they were in a private meeting room, but they’re not and he sees Gabriel a table over talking to a very pretty woman. “Hi, Dean.”

Dean’s face is breaking his heart because he’s never seen his older brother look so lost. It’s only there for a second, but Sam’s good at watching people now. The only person he never really gets anything from is Castiel and he thinks that’s because the doctor pretty much went to school for that. It strikes him that Dean hasn’t looked like this since a few weeks after their parents’ funerals and Sam needed a permission slip signed for a school field trip.

He can tell Dean wants to touch him but he doesn’t know if he’s allowed. “How is it in here, they treating you right?”

Sam shrugs. “Yeah.” He thinks Dean wants him to elaborate but he chooses not to.

“How’s the food?”

“It’s alright.”

“Your roommate?”

Sam glances quickly to where Gabriel is laughing with his visitor and shrugs again. “He’s not bad.”

He can tell Dean is getting frustrated. “What about group?” Sam shrugs again. “Sammy—“

“Everything’s fine, Dean.” It’s not, but it’s Sam’s own fault. He doesn’t want to tell Dean about the nightmares or the panic attacks or the fact that he can’t concentrate worth a damn. He definitely isn’t going to tell him about how sometimes he can’t remember their parents’ anniversary or Bobby’s birthday. He should be getting better. Why isn’t he getting better?

Dean sighs because he knows when his little brother is lying. He’s had months of practice lately and he knows, but he doesn’t push. “What about Dr. Novak?”

“He’s pretty great, actually,” Sam says. “He likes Star Wars and he lets me borrow his books.”

“That’s great!” Dean seems pleased that something has gotten Sam to say more than a few words as an answer. “What else?”

“I think you’d like him—but he doesn’t really understand sarcasm,” he says. “He let me borrow _The Great Gatsby_. I haven’t read that since before—“ Since before Mom and Dad died, he wants to say but he can’t. Dean knows though, Sam can see it on his face. “I forgot how good it was.”

Dean smiles. “You know they’re making it into a movie? Leonardo DiCaprio’s in it.”

The visit is easier after that.

 

_One of his first memories is sitting in the back of Dad’s Impala. They’ve all piled in for a road trip to visit someone on Mom’s side of the family a couple states away. His parents are in the front seat and he’s strapped in the back next to Dean who’s got his Walkman turned up loud enough that Sam can still hear the strains of Led Zeppelin through the headphones._

_If he leans to the side and peers up over the top of the seat, he can see the way Mom’s fingers are laced with Dad’s and the easy smile on her face. He thinks she’s the most beautiful woman in the world._

 

There are some days when Sam doesn’t want to get out of bed. He feels tired, weighed down and he just wants to lie there quietly and ignore everyone else. The first couple times it happens, Gabriel doesn’t say anything to him. He just goes about his own morning routine and then leaves to do his meetings and activities.

Today isn’t like that, though.

“Come on, Sam! Time to get up! Let’s go!”

Sam curls his fingers into his sheets and pulls them up over himself. He doesn’t respond.

“It’s a new day! There’s a bunch of shit to do. Get up!” Gabriel calls. He tugs lightly on the sheet and Sam just holds it tighter. He just wants the other man to leave.

“Leave me alone,” he growls and he hears Gabriel still.

“I think that’s the most you’ve ever said to me,” the smaller man muses. Sam can practically hear the grin on his face.

He rolls away from Gabriel, keeping a firm grip on the bedding. He grunts out a response that has the other man laughing.

“Ah, that’s more what I’m used to.” Gabriel strides around to the other side of the bed, closest to Sam’s face. “Come on, get up and do this one thing with me and then I promise I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the day—ooh, the rest of the _week_. How’s that for motivation?”

Sam makes an opening in the sheets big enough for his face and peeks through at Gabriel. The man looks earnest and excited. “Fine.”

\--

The one thing turns out to be an exploration into the adjacent forest. Sam isn’t sure they’re even supposed to be out here, but he wants to go back to bed and have a week of not being talked at so he doesn’t say anything to Gabriel about it. They’ve been walking for a few minutes and a part of him wants to ask where exactly they’re headed, but that would probably just spur the other man into talking when he’s being blessedly silent at the moment.

“You know, you’d look a lot better if you slept and ate some more,” Gabriel says, looking back at the other man over his shoulder. So much for silence.

Sam doesn’t answer, just picks his way carefully around a thorn-covered bush and shrugs.

“I heard you talking to that guy visiting you, so I know you can.” Gabriel stops in a clearing and sits with a huff on a large rock.

 Sam sits carefully on a fallen tree. The hurricanes and storms from the last few months have really done a number on the forest. “So?”

“How come you never talk to me?”

Sam tries to come up with a diplomatic answer that’s also the least number of words. “I don’t know you.”

Gabriel frowns and lobs a piece of moss from the rock at Sam. It doesn’t even make half the distance. “Well you would if you talked to me.”

“I don’t—I don’t want to know people here,” Sam says.  
“Why not?”

“Because this place isn’t real.”

The other man’s frown deepens. “Wait, so you think you’re like, hallucinating or something?”

Sam glares at him. A bitch face, Dean used to call them. “No. Don’t be an idiot.”

Gabriel holds up his hands. “Okaaaay…then tell me what you mean.”

It’s not that easy though, because Sam knows what he means but it’s not something he thinks will make sense to anyone else.

“This place isn’t the real world. There aren’t people to give you pills or talk to you or teach you how to paint to connect with your fucking feelings. This place is safe and cozy and clean and it’s driving me fucking nuts!” Gabriel starts looking at him like he’s got two heads and Sam can’t stop his voice from getting louder. “I don’t want to live in here where I get woken up at the same time every day and expected to be asleep in my bed by 9pm. The real world doesn’t work like this place. You don’t get three meals a day and someone to talk to about your repressed feelings that led you to addiction.” He wants to stop talking, he’s screaming at himself to shut up because he’s fucking stupid and talking about it isn’t going to make it any less true. “In the real world, your parents die in a car crash on their way to see you in the school play and your girlfriend burns to death in a fire because you made her move into a house with shitty wiring and you weren’t there when it burned because you were getting _milk._ Oh, and your brother can’t look at you because you tried to rob a store to get money to pay for drugs.”

The woods are silent and all Sam can hear is himself breathing. Gabriel is staring at him, wide-eyed…judging. Sam stands abruptly and walks away quickly, mumbling “sorry” over and over.

 

_Jess laughs at him when he carries her through the door of their newly rented house. It’s only 10 minutes from campus and it’s basically perfect even though it’s a bit on the older side. He sets her down in the kitchen only to pull her close and dip his head to press a kiss to her lips. He can feel her smiling._

_When she finally pulls away, it’s with a sigh and a gentle hit to his arm. “Okay, okay, Romeo. Let a girl have some air.” Her eyes are shining._

_“C’mon, baby. Let’s move all your crap in so we can relax,” he says._

_“Oh, all_ my _crap? Says the man with an entire library worth of books,” she retorts, opening up one of the boxes on the counter._

_He slaps her ass lightly and grins when she gasps. He rushes out the door with her right on his heels._

_He loves it here already._

 

Sam skips his meeting with Castiel. He skips everything, actually. He doesn’t go to lunch or dinner or even the movie they’re showing in the common room. He sits in the bathroom he and Gabriel share and even though it doesn’t have a lock, no one tries to come in. He hears his roommate come into to the room, thinks he hears the brush of fingers on the wood of the door, so he turns on the shower.

He lets the water run, turns up the heat as hot as it will go. He steps under the spray slowly and lets the blistering water cover his skin and make it go red. He’s halfway in before he even realizes he still has his underwear on and at that point, he’s past caring.

It hurts but he wants it to.

The water isn’t like the water in his old house. It doesn’t go cold even after he sits on the floor forty minutes later. It stays scalding hot and Sam wonders if he’s going to cause any damage to his skin by just sitting here. Not that he really cares anyway.

The longer he sits, the more he thinks about Gabriel and Castiel and Garth and all of the other people who’re in the center. He thinks about Bobby and Dean and his parents. He thinks about Ruby.

He thinks about Jess.

When Gabriel finally bursts through the bathroom door, Sam is passed out in the shower, the hot water still beating down on him.

\--

He wakes up in the infirmary with Castiel next to his bed.

The doctor smiles when Sam’s eyes find him. “Hello Sam.”

“Hey.”

“How are you feeling?”

Sam’s skin is itchy and sore. He wants to scratch, but most of his chest and arms are covered in some sort of lotion.

Castiel watches him carefully, just like he always does. “Your skin had some minor damage. The lotion is to keep it from getting too dried out after being in such hot water for a long period.”

“Oh,” is all Sam says. He puts his arms back down on the bed carefully.

“Can I ask why?”

Sam doesn’t have an answer so he just shrugs.

Castiel frowns. “You were hurting yourself on purpose.” It isn’t a question and Sam can’t really look at him. “Were you having a panic attack?”

Sam shakes his head. “I remembered something.”

“What did you remember?”

“Moving in with Jess.” He hasn’t said her name out loud in a very long time. Like if he doesn’t talk about her, no one else can take any more of her away. The room is quiet.

Castiel knows, of course, what happened to Jess and why Sam ended up here. It’s all in the thin manila file with Sam’s name stamped on it. His life and his mistakes all packaged neatly to be read by doctors and nurses. It makes him angry.

He doesn’t answer any more of Castiel’s questions.

 

_“What are you doing, Sam?” Dean’s voice might break him._

_“Nothing. Just—Dean just don’t worry about it,” he tries and turns to leave. His head is fuzzy and his teeth feel grimy. There’s vomit on his shirt._

_His brother grabs him by the arm. “Sammy, stop. Just stop, okay? You can’t keep doing this. Stop trying to drown yourself in alcohol. It’s not gonna bring her back.”_

_Sam snaps, rips free of Dean’s grip. “You don’t think I know that? There’s nothing that’s going to bring her back because I killed her with that fucking house.”_

_“Sam—“_

_“She’s gone and when I close my eyes I can see her burning on my ceiling. Burning and screaming and I can’t stop it,” he cries. “I did it.”_

_Dean reaches for him and pulls him close even though Sam’s got a good four inches on his older brother. “No you didn’t.”_

_But Sam knows._

 

Sam knows a lot about Gabriel, if only because the other man never shuts up. He was a famous artist before he got a little to into the art scene as opposed to actually making it. Cocaine, alcohol, marijuana, ecstasy—he did a little of everything until he crashed his car and almost died and his family sent him here.

He neglects to mention that Castiel is his brother until six weeks into Sam’s stay.

“Cas wanted me here but under Ellen’s care instead of his own. I think he wanted to keep an eye on me,” Gabriel says.

“Cas?” Sam looks up from his book.

Gabriel starts, looking confused when Sam actually responds. “Yeah, Dr. Novak. He’s my brother.”

“Oh. Must be nice to be able to see him all the time.” Sam sees Dean almost three times a week, so he shouldn’t feel a stab of jealousy in his gut.

“Yeah, except having a psychologist brother isn’t really a walk in the park,” Gabriel muses.

Sam frowns but he can see where the man is coming from. “I guess so.”

“What about your bother?” Gabriel asks, pulling up the blinds on the window. Sam can see the green of the forest from his bed and he wonders how much it’s changed from his first day. The seasons move quickly here.

“Dean?”

“Yeah the one with the leather jacket and Ken doll looks.”

Sam can feel a smile tugging at his lips picturing the way Dean would react to that. He stamps it down before Gabriel can see. “He’s a senior designer at an engineering firm.”

“Ah,” the other man says. “So genius runs in the family then?”

Sam looks up at that. “What do you mean?”

“Dude, you powered through like three books in two days. Castiel doesn’t even read that fast,” Gabriel supplies.

“Doesn’t mean I’m smart.”

“What’d you do before…this then?”

Sam thinks about it for a second. He could be a smart ass and say heroin or breaking and entering, but he finds himself enjoying the simple conversation. “I was in school.”

Gabriel crosses to sit on his bed across from where Sam’s still spread out with a book on his chest. “See, smartypants. I told you.”

 

_He gets an interview for law school and Jess throws him a party._

_“Baby, we don’t even know if I got in. I haven’t even_ had _the interview,” he grouses._

_Dean slides into the kitchen where they’re both standing and claps him on the shoulder. “Yeah but when you do we get to have another party. Jess was just looking for a way to have the better, more attractive Winchester around.”_

_Jess laughs. “You’ve found out my secret! Quick kiss me before Sam can get in the way again!”_

_Dean swoops in to plant a kiss on her cheek but Sam scoops her up and throws her over his shoulder to take her outside, pinching her backside. She screeches and calls him a caveman while Dean laughs long and loud._

_He nails the interview but when they celebrate, it’s just the two of them._

 

Group gets better. Talking with Gabriel and Castiel seems to make Sam feel looser, more comfortable around the rest of the patients. A guy named Benny asks Sam if he wants to play poker in the common room and he actually says yes.

He doesn’t just talk to Castiel about books anymore. They discuss the accident that took John and Mary. Sam never says he blames himself but Castiel knows, just like Dean always did. They still don’t talk about Jess.

“How’d you get hooked?” Gabriel asks one day. They’re back in the clearing, the trees shading Sam on his log while Gabriel basks in the sliver of light coming through.

“A girl.”

Gabriel sighs and closes his eyes in the sunshine. “It’s always a pretty face isn’t it?”

Sam nods. “Her name was Ruby.”

“Did you love her?” Gabriel is watching him now.

“No. I thought I did. And I thought she loved me.” They’re both quiet for a long time after that. In fact, they don’t speak until they’re on the way back to the center.

“How much longer are you here?”

Gabriel looks over at Sam, surprised. Sam never initiates conversation. “Four weeks,” he answers softly.

Four weeks. Sam’s going to have to fake a grudging respect for someone else for the last two weeks of his stay. Is he faking though? He doesn’t really know because he likes talking to Gabriel, likes the sound of Gabriel’s voice when he first wakes up in the morning when it’s gravely and scratchy from sleep. He likes the way Gabriel never presses, not after their first trip into the woods. He likes not feeling alone.

“Oh.”

Gabriel stops him with a hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”

Sam shrugs. “Yeah. Sure.”

Maybe if he keeps saying it, he will be.

 

_Sam doesn’t know why Dean doesn’t like Ruby. She’s funny and nice and she loves Sam. He’s almost sure she does._

_When they meet up at Bobby’s, Dean looks him over. “Hey Sammy, you been losing weight?”_

_Sam looks down at his clothes and maybe his shirts are hanging off him a little more than they used to. “Not that I know of.”_

_“You’ve been eating regular?”_

_Ruby brushes by them, laughing. “He’s not a child Dean. He knows how to feed himself.”_

_And he wants to agree with her, but he can’t remember if he spent his money on food or dope today. He pulls at the long sleeves of his shirt. If Dean notices, he doesn’t say anything._

_Bobby studies him carefully when they all sit down at the table. “A bit hot for the long sleeves, Sam. You feeling okay?”_

_Sam opens his mouth to speak but Ruby cuts him off. “Jeeze what is it today? Sam’s 23, not six. He can take care of himself!” She sounds angry._

_She’s angry a lot._

 

Gabriel’s got a week left before he’s discharged. He’s already talking about what he’s going to do when he gets out. Sam listens but goes back to not responding beyond grunts and he refuses to talk to Castiel about anything but books.

“Are you okay, Sam?”

Sam looks up from the copy of _The Road_ and stares blankly at Castiel. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

The doctor narrows his eyes. “Because we’re worried—“

“That’s bullshit,” Sam growls.

“Explain,” Castiel counters.

“Everyone asks everyone else if they’re okay. It’s always with this fake air of concern,” Sam says.

“Fake?”  
“Yeah. Fake. Like, it’s your _job_ to ask me if I’m okay. You want to make sure you don’t get sued or whatever and that you fix one more fucked up kid to put in your books,” he continues. “You don’t really give a shit. You’re just here to make money off the rich people out there and get famous for being so good to take in strays.”

“Sam—“

“It’s _worse_ when the people out there ask me. The other patients.” He doesn’t say Gabriel because Gabriel is leaving and he can’t afford to be thinking about him. Not when he’s already— “They ask because they think we’re the same. That we’re brothers in arms or some shit.”

Castiel is looking at him with wide eyes.

“They think that because they got hooked while they were partying and living it up that they can even _compare_ to what I’ve been through—the stuff I’ve had to live with.” He’s so angry and he doesn’t know _why_. “They think—they think that they can just talk to me a-and get in my head and then just leave right when I don’t want them to! That’s what you people do here! You give me someone who doesn’t know what I did, who doesn’t know I watched my girlfriend threaten a kid—a fucking seven year old and try to kill his father, and then you take him away.”

“Sam, you—“

“No! Shut up!” Sam yells. “Just stop trying to analyze me and all the crap I did. I’m fucked up, Castiel. I’m so fucked up. I knocked her out and I left that store and walked in front of that car because I wanted to die,” his hands are trembling. “I almost took a kid’s parent away from him. What kind of person would I be then? Who wants to know someone like that?” His voice grows soft. “Why didn’t I just die?”

Castiel is quiet for a long time, but Sam doesn’t look at him. He clenches his fists and pushes his knuckles into the meat of his thighs. Castiel knew about the boy and his father and the car, he must have read it in Sam’s file. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been sitting there before the doctor speaks.

“Almost,” he says. Sam looks up, confused. “You said ‘almost’, but that’s not true. You did the opposite of ‘almost’, Sam. You saved that boy’s life and the life of his father.”

“But—“

“Your girlfriend was holding the gun, not you. She was going to pull the trigger,” Castiel continues, “not you. You stopped her. You were a hero to that little boy.” The doctor walks to his desk and pulls a file from the stack on the corner. He hands it to Sam before sitting back down.

“What is—“

“Open it and see,” Castiel says.

Inside the folder are letters and pictures. Some of them are on lined paper, some of them are carefully drawn in crayon but they all have two words: _Thank you_. He traces the blocky letters and the painstakingly drawn stick figures with shaking fingers. “Who…?”

“Dylan,” Castiel says softly. “He was the little boy you saved.”

“I d-don’t understand,” Sam stutters, unsure.

The doctor rolls his chair forward until his knees are inches from Sam’s. He points to the stick figures. “These are letters thanking you because you did, Sam. You saved him and his father. _You_ did that.”

 

_“You did it, Sammy,” Dad says. He sounds so proud._

_Mom walks in from the kitchen, into the view of the video camera set up on its tripod. Her face is cut off until she kneels next to Dad. “All this fuss over him saying your name?” She sounds like she’s scolding him, but her smile tells a different story._

_“He’s been saying your name for days, Mary!” Dad whines. She laughs and kisses him on the cheek._

_“Well he’s said it now, so why not leave the poor kid alone,” she says as she disappears into the kitchen._

_Dad fumbles with the camera while infant Sam gurgles happily in the background. “I still can’t believe he said ‘Dean’ first.”_

 

It’s the night before Gabriel is supposed to leave. He hasn’t said much to Sam since the session in Castiel’s office, hasn’t asked about the crayon picture hanging above Sam’s bed.

Sam isn’t an idiot. He knows that some letters and drawings aren’t going to change him overnight. He’s not fixed by any definition of the term, if anything he’s even a little bit more messed up than he was before because now he knows what he wants. And it’s terrifying.

Somewhere between Gabriel talking _at_ him and Gabriel talking _with_ him, Sam is stuck with this fucked up collection of feelings that go from wanting to hold Gabriel close, to never let him leave, and pushing him away so Sam can’t possibly ruin him. He doesn’t know which side is winning.

Until of course, he’s lying awake, listening to the sound of Gabriel breathing and he realizes he knows the other man is awake too. He can tell by the way Gabriel is breathing. He thinks that might be saying something.

He slides out from between the sheets of his bed and creeps across the space to where Gabriel lies. Sam doesn’t say anything when he pulls back the other man’s covers and crawls into the bed that’s too small for him on a good day, and definitely too small for two grown men.

“Sam? What’re you—“

But Sam can’t bear the rejection until after he has this—this one thing before Gabriel leaves and forgets him for good. He slips his leg over the other man’s hips, covering his body with his own. Sam dips his head and lets his lips brush over Gabriel’s, lets himself have this one moment before the inevitable crash and burn that has defined his life.

When they part, he stares down at the man beneath him even though he wants to look away or run and hide. Gabriel’s eyes are closed and when they open, they find Sam’s even in the dark of the room. He reaches up and touches his lips. “Sam why are you doing this?” He sounds like he’s pleading. It breaks Sam entirely.

He takes Gabriel’s hand in his own, lifts it to his lips and presses a kiss to the palm. “Because I want to.”

The cast is clunky and annoying. It gets stuck on Sam’s shirt when Gabriel tries to pull it from his frame. He whacks himself with a few times in their struggle to get undressed and Sam finds himself wanting to laugh only to have Gabriel pulls sighs and moans from him instead. He’s forgotten what sex is like sober after so long. It’s exhilarating, holding someone and actually feeling them.

Gabriel is so sensitive and the noises he makes set Sam on fire from the inside. When he presses his lips to the soft skin of Gabriel’s neck and feels the man’s pulse under his tongue, he feels alive for the first time in he can’t even remember how long. He wants to crawl inside Gabriel and live in the cage of his ribs, spend his days listening to the steady beat of his heart.

He loves the bow of Gabriel’s spine when he kisses his way down the man’s body, stopping briefly at his chest to discover how sensitive he truly is. He slides his hands beneath Gabriel’s arched back, drags his fingers down to catch at the elastic of Gabriel’s sleep pants and his underwear, pulling them away until the man falls free into his hand.

Gabriel pants and moans and cries out until Sam swallows them with a kiss. He lets the other man push away his own pants so they can slide together in the cradle of both their fingers, wet with precome and the lotion from the nightstand. He whispers that he doesn’t want Gabriel to forget him when he leaves, that he wishes he wasn’t so fucked up that he’s ignored this for so long because Gabriel is beautiful—so beautiful like this. Sam tightens his grip, thrusts into their joined hands until Gabriel stiffens beneath him, his body locking as he comes so perfectly. Sam watches the splash of white over the man’s chest, thrusts twice more and spills between them.

He collapses off to the side so Gabriel can clean them both up with one of the discarded t-shirts he fished from the floor. When they’re both as clean as they’ll get, Sam pulls Gabriel close, holds him to his chest and kisses him like he’s never going to have another chance. The other man gives as good as he gets, tangles his fingers in Sam’s hair and pulls, just the right side of painful. Sam groans into the kiss, pulling the man into the semi-circle of his body and falls asleep to Gabriel whispering his name.

 

_“Saaaam…time to get up Sam.” He rolls over to see Jess smiling down at him. “Good morning.”_

_His thumb finds the curve of her cheek and he grins. “’Mornin’ baby.”_

_“Don’t ‘mornin’ baby’ me. You forgot to get milk last night,” she laughs.  
“We don’t need milk,” he says, tugging at her arm. “Milk is definitely not needed for the plans I have for us today.”_

_Jess rolls her eyes and then climbs from the bed. “We need milk for the pancakes.”_

_“Screw the pancakes! Come back to bed!”_

_She gives him a look. “It’s Sunday. It’s Pancake Day. Now go get the damn milk before I beat you.”_

_He slides out of bed and crowds her up against the doorframe just to kiss her breathless. “You couldn’t beat me up, I’m too cute.”_

_“I don’t care how cute you are, you’ve got the worst morning breath and we_ still _don’t have any milk,” she says. “Now get going!”_

_He kisses her cheek and grabs the keys to his car from the hook. He thinks about the ring box in the glove compartment and how Pancake Day would be the perfect time to ask._

 

“I have to leave today,” Gabriel says when Sam wakes up in his bed the next morning.

“I know.”

The other man runs his fingers through Sam’s wild bedhead. “Are you gonna forget about me? Try to woo your new roommate?”

Sam pushes himself up on his elbows and looks down at Gabriel. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they won’t be you,” he says simply.

Gabriel studies him. “I’m pretty fucked up, Sam. Are you sure you want to get involved with someone like me?”

Sam runs his thumb along the curve of his cheek. “I think we’re all fucked up,” he says finally. “The trick is to find someone whose fuck ups fit yours.” He leans down to kiss the stupid smile from Gabriel’s lips.

He’s on his way.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, so this is the longest "complete" fic I've ever written. I don't know anything about rehab or drug addiction and all the symptoms I gave Sam I googled.
> 
> I'm sorry if anything is wrong.
> 
> I'm on tumblr also, my URL is the same as my name here.


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